PARIS (AFP) - Several Turkish organizations published an open letter in French newspapers yesterday calling on the National Assembly not to back a bill that would make it a punishable offense to deny “the existence of the 1915 Armenian genocide.” Proposed by members of the opposition Socialist Party (PS), the bill has a first reading before the Parliament on May 18. If approved, it would authorize a maximum five years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros ($57,000) for any person who denied that the massacres of Armenians in World War I were a genocide.

ANKARA (AFP) - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he told Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday that the international community would not tolerate the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the Anatolia news agency reported from Baku. Erdogan met Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of a regional gathering in the Azerbaijani capital. Asked what messages he conveyed to the hardline Iranian leader, Erdogan said, “No country in the world will approve the proliferation of nuclear weapons.”

Police sealed off a Belgrade neighborhood yesterday in their hunt for war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic and searched the home of his son. Security officers and a special police unit fanned out through the block in Banovo Brdo, where Darko Mladic — the son of the former Bosnian-Serb military commander — lives in the Mladic family home. Also yesterday, two more people were arrested on suspicion of helping the former military commander evade justice. (AP)

Hundreds of residents were evacuated yesterday from villages in western Romania after mudslides damaged nearly 400 houses overnight, causing some to collapse, a municipal official said. No deaths were reported. The mudslides swept the villages of Secuiri and Rosia de Amardia overnight, sending residents onto the streets as the mud engulfed their homes. (AP)

The Netherlands has provided Albania with a 1.6-million-euro ($2 million) grant to remove pesticides and other chemicals considered a risk to public health and the environment from an abandoned plant outside a western port city, authorities said yesterday. The former chemical plant is in Porto Romano, 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Tirana and close to the port city of Durres, according to the Environment Ministry. The grant will provide funds to remove and destroy some 800 tons of dangerous chemicals until mid-June. (AP)